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Postsecondary Education

Analyzing seven years of post-graduation data from more than 20,000 students who attended Washington state's community and technical colleges, researchers found that community college credentials that take more than a year to complete lead to substantial wage increases and greater likelihoods of employment in most fields. This raises concern about the facts that in the last decade state funding towards community college education has faced a downward trend, and that during the same time period short-term certificates have ballooned as a share of community college credentials in most states.

In the face of shrinking government budgets and a growing need to train a high-skilled labor force, policymakers have become increasingly interested in cost-effective measures that induce more students to pursue post-secondary education. New research examines whether a low cost intervention, where information about a student's own academic ability is provided, influences their decision about whether and where to attend college.

Voluntary gaps in college tenure, be they for professional reasons or otherwise, are common occurrences in the United States. Existing studies of voluntary academic leave (taking a “gap year” or “gap semester”) have focused on causes, while studies of collegiate internships have focused on labor market effects. We estimate the impacts of these two occurrences on returning academic and other collegiate outcomes.

Colleges frequently change their application fees and application essay requirements, and it turns out that students strongly respond to these relatively small costs in the application process. Our new paper, “Screening Mechanisms and Student Responses in the College Market,” we find that requiring a college application essay decreases the number of applications received at that college by 6.5%. We also find that increasing the application fee by 10% corresponds to roughly a 1% decrease in applications.

Recent research finds that at community colleges and less-selective four-year colleges, students who attend summer bridge programs are, on average, ten percentage points more likely to finish degrees within six years, with larger effect sizes for black and Hispanic students (compared to whites, Asians, and others), first-generation college students, and students with lower GPAs in high school.

Previous research has found that remedial courses often have little impact on students. A new study suggests that many students are assigned to remediation who do not actually need it, but that better screening measures could greatly improve appropriate placement.

A relatively large share of high school graduates who are accepted to college and intend to enroll, nevertheless fail to matriculate. Researchers find that this post-graduation summer ‘melt’ can be greatly reduced with simple, low-cost interventions.